Page 31 of The Gold Dragon Prince
The underground room where Lady Saoirse had taken my baby was an alchemist’s lair. Lady Saoirse was even more obsessed with gold than I’d thought.
“Are you certain it’s a golden goose egg?” Lord Manfred said. “With all the talk about dragons I’ve heard lately, it could be one of them.”
“It’s too small,” Lady Saoirse dismissed him. “And where would a gardener and his omega find a dragon egg?”
“Where would they find a golden goose egg?” Lord Manfred asked.
“Quiet!” Lady Saoirse snapped. “I need to find another way to coax it open.”
She stepped away from the table, and once again, I wanted to leap out of my concealment and make a dash for my baby so badly it made me shake. Gildur had to hold me still.
He had to grip me even tighter when Saoirse came back to the table with what looked like large fireplace tongs. I fought to swallow my cry as she grasped the egg in the tongs, then took it over to the burning, crackling fireplace.
Gildur had to clap a hand over my mouth and pull my body back against his completely when Lady Saoirse used the tongs to thrust our egg straight into the heart of the fire. I cried out in fear for my baby, but the sound was muffled. Tears of terror and heartache for my poor child ran down my face as she turned the egg this way and that.
“Shh,” Gildur cautioned me. “Don’t worry.”
I made a different sort of sound and twisted to stare incredulously at him.
Of all things, Gildur smiled. “It’s a dragon egg,” he whispered. “Fire is nothing to a dragon egg. It probably tickles. Listen. Feel it.”
I had no idea what Gildur meant, but when I forced myself to stop panicking and reach out for my baby, I felt a distinct hint of…laughing?
I whipped to face forward again, eyes wide. The feelingthat my egg was giggling as Lady Saoirse turned it this way and that in the fire intensified.
“It’s not melting,” Lord Manfred pointed out in a flat voice. “It’s a dragon’s egg.”
Lady Saoirse pulled my egg out of the fire again and looked at it. She took it to the table, standing so that Gildur and I could see her face, and let go of it with the tongs. Gingerly, she reached out and touched it. The egg must have been cool to the touch, despite being in the fire, because she laid her whole hand on it.
“A dragon’s egg!” she hissed with excitement. “This changes everything.”
“In what way?” Lord Manfred asked.
“Dragon eggs are filled with magic,” Lady Saoirse said. “King Freslik could raise the largest army his kingdom has ever seen and I could still knock them all over like matchsticks if I had the power of this dragon’s egg.”
“I thought you wanted the men of King Freslik’s army and his kingdom in order to do battle against Queen Gaia,” Lord Manfred said.
“Why stop there?” Saoirse said, standing straighter, her hand still on my egg. “First, I’ll defeat King Freslik, then I’ll vanquish Queen Gaia, and then I’ll wage war against all of the worlds in the universe.”
“We’lldefeat King Freslik and Queen Gaia, you mean,” Lord Manfred said with a frown. “Won’t that be enough? Why spend your entire life at war when two worlds is more than enough.”
“It is never enough!” Saoirse bellowed. “Everything in all the universes will never be enough!”
My heart sank to my stomach with her words. She was right. Greed like that of Lady Saoirse knew no bounds.Nothing would ever be enough to make her feel full and satisfied.
That made me think about her abandoned manor and its lack of servants. Lady Saoirse surrounded herself with no one and had made no friends. She grasped and battled, gathering more and more to herself, but she shared none of it. All the wealth in the world was nothing without people to share it with, without love.
I reached back for Gildur’s hand. I could have lived in one of the serf’s hovels and still considered myself the luckiest omega alive as long as I still had him and our child.
As I reached back, I bumped the table slightly. It was enough to upset something sitting on the surface, which fell and shattered. Slippery potion dripped off the edge of the table beside me and Gildur, but that wasn’t the worst of our problems.
“Who’s there?” Lady Saoirse demanded as she and Lord Manfred both turned to face it.
I caught my breath. We’d been discovered. There was no getting around it.
The only thing I could do was save my alpha by sacrificing myself.
“It’s me,” I said, leaping out of our hiding place and willing Gildur, through our bond, to stay where he was.
